Density hasn’t been kind to Cottage Grove, a small neighborhood with narrow streets, few sidewalks, poor drainage and scarce parking for the owners of its many new homes and their guests.

Like many neighborhoods inside Loop 610, Cottage Grove in recent years has experienced a flurry of construction of large townhomes that loom over 80-year-old cottages next door. Two or three dwellings crowd sites where one house stood previously. Streets are cluttered with vehicles parked every which way. Water stands in the streets after heavy rains.

“It was shocking to see this jewel of a neighborhood in this condition,” said former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, a senior fellow with the nonprofit Urban Land Institute who toured Cottage Grove two years ago. “It was about the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, to be honest with you.”

The issues in Cottage Grove and other central

Houston neighborhoods are on the minds of city officials, neighborhood leaders and others as the city considers the first major revisions to its development code in a decade. The proposed amendments were prompted in part by indications that pressure for dense new development is spreading to the area between Loop 610 and Beltway 8.

Marlene Gafrick, Houston’s planning and development director, said her department’s proposal to extend Houston’s “urban area” from the Loop to the Beltway would give dozens of neighborhoods tools to protect their traditional character and quality of life, such as procedures to petition for minimum lot sizes and building lines.

Avoiding zoning

Some neighborhood leaders on both sides of the Loop, however, worry the measures don’t go far enough to prevent flooding, protect open space or ensure adequate parking. They see the proposals as an extension of the same approach that produced current conditions in neighborhoods such as Cottage Grove.

Developers and other real estate interests generally support the amendments.

The changes to the development code, known as Chapter 42, are part of Houston’s continuing effort to bring order to its growth and development patterns without enacting zoning, which voters have rejected four times in the past century. Last week, a City Council committee delayed consideration of the changes for a month. The full council is expected to consider the amendments in August.

The city’s urban area inside the Loop, established in 1999, is subject to a density cap of 27 homes per acre that would be extended to the Beltway under new rules. Under this framework, 81 percent of Houston would be considered urban and the rest — all outside the Beltway — suburban. Other provisions, however, would allow for narrower lots that could enable builders to squeeze more single-family homes onto a block. Critics said this would lead to more density with no assurance of adequate streets, drainage or parking to support it.

Cottage Grove is a good example, said Mary-Jane Buschlen, an art gallery owner who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years. “I think we should have more urban density; it’s better for the environment,” Buschlen said. “But it has to be done in a way that all the structural systems can work with each other.”

Houston’s development code, she said, seems better suited for open land than for redevelopment in established neighborhoods. And the proposed amendments, she said, “are just going to exacerbate the problem.”

Others say the notion of arbitrary urban and suburban designations based on geography is wrongheaded.

David Crossley, the president of the nonprofit Houston Tomorrow, noted that Afton Oaks, a neighborhood of traditional single-family detached houses along Richmond just inside the Loop, is considered urban under current standards. The much denser Uptown-Galleria area just across the freeway is considered suburban. Neighborhood leaders have parsed a draft of the Chapter 42 amendments, posted on the city planning department’s Web site, in minute detail.

‘A heat island’

Ed Browne, a leader of a group of Spring Branch neighborhoods, said the proposed parking requirements, including new rules for guest parking, are inadequate. Other provisions, he said, could aggravate flooding by allowing the loss of trees and unpaved ground that absorb water. “We’re changing Houston from a green canopy to a heat island,” Browne said.

Whatever the merits of the proposed amendments, real estate experts agree market forces behind them are real. Land available for development between the Loop and Beltway is experiencing the same price pressure that affected inner Loop neighborhoods in the 1990s, said David Jarvis, Houston director of Metrostudy, a housing market research firm.